Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  Blake shook his head. “There’s no one out there, Amanda.”

  He knew her name. It was scary.

  “We held back until you showed up. As soon as you came in, I gave them the signal on the radio. There’s no way out.”

  Blake nodded. “Excellent. Signal on the radio. That’s a nice touch, Amanda. But I’ve spent years working with military personnel trained far better than any police force. There was no one in the area. It’s just you and me. I’ve been watching you drink your coffee and make your way through five doughnuts for the past hour.”

  “It was four doughnuts,” Amanda said. “Put the gun down.”

  “Don’t follow me, and you stay alive,” Blake said. “So does this nice man here.”

  He began backing down the corridor that led to the restrooms and the crash door that led outside. Amanda had checked out the exit earlier. It led to a vacant lot, strewn with glass, backing up near Eighth Street.

  Amanda followed cautiously, keeping her gun trained on him. She wished she had called for backup now. She knew there was no one on the other side of the door, and if Blake got away, he would disappear through the downtown streets. Slip through their fingers sagain.

  Take the shot Make the shot.

  She couldn’t. She didn’t have it. And she couldn’t risk that Blake would get off a shot first and kill the manager.

  Blake was almost to the door. “The two of us are leaving now. Don’t make me kill him. Stay where you are.”

  “Go through that door and they’ll split your head open like a watermelon, Blake.” Bravado. Lies. They both knew it.

  She was six feet away from him. Blake’s back was at the crash door. He waited there, hesitating, and she wasn’t sure why. Did he believe her? Was he wondering if there really was a SWAT team poised out back?

  The bell on the front door clanged again. A new customer entered the shop. Amanda flinched, and Blake threw the Asian manager at her, his body wildly flying through the air and tumbling both of them to the ground like bowling pins. As Amanda fell, she heard the crash door bang as Blake spun through and vanished. She cursed, disentangled herself from the manager, and scrambled back to her feet.

  She charged down the corridor.

  At the door, she froze.

  Was Blake running or waiting?

  Amanda raised her gun and kicked the door open, watching it hurtle around to the opposite wall of the building.

  When the door swung open, banging against the wall, Blake knew she was smart.

  He recoiled and almost fired. His finger twitched on the trigger, instinct taking over, and he realized at the last instant that she wasn’t coming through the door. She wanted him to fire, betraying his position.

  His bullet, then her bullet, and he would be dead. A nice ruse.

  He knew enough to respect his enemy.

  He didn’t fire. She didn’t know where he was. Now, he knew, she had to choose.

  Damn. He didn’t fire.

  Left or right, she thought.

  She had to make a choice. Either he was on the left side of the door or the right. Or he was running, getting away, and each second she hesitated gave him more time to escape.

  She would roll through, pivot, and fire. Make the right choice and it was even odds for both of them, gun to gun, man to… woman.

  Make the wrong choice, and she was dead. Simple as that. Left or right.

  Left was the only direction that made sense. The door opened left. On the right, he was exposed. To the left, the door gave him cover, blocked her view for a crucial millisecond, gave him an advantage. She had the edge if he was on the right-and he knew it.

  Unless he could see into her head and anticipate what she was thinking and realize that being on the right gave him the edge if she went to the left first, offering him her back. A gamble. A risk. Vegas.

  She couldn’t overthink. She was up against a tactician. He’d give himself the maximum odds for survival. That meant he was waiting for her on the left.

  Or running.

  She needed to move.

  Amanda thought about Bobby. She could taste his last kiss.

  Then she kicked the door a second time, and as the light spilled out, she dove and rolled onto the pavement and came up in a crouch to her left with her gun aimed. She had just enough time for the image to reach her brain, to see the empty stretch of wall behind the door, to realize her mistake. She reacted instantly. Didn’t fire. Began to twist, turn, duck, shift.

  Fast Blindingly fast. But not fast enough.

  He waited for her on the right, his gun poised. She had to go left, because all her training told her to go left, and cops were creatures of training. There was no surprise, no pleasure, no sadness, when she did. In every fight there was a winner and a loser, and it was no disgrace to lose with dignity.

  She was very fast. He was impressed.

  Most cops would have frozen, hesitated, but she turned seamlessly, recovering from her mistake and spinning back the other way. If she had gone right, she might well have gotten the first shot.

  But no.

  Blake pulled the trigger.

  It was such a short moment, but it felt so long.

  Amanda was on a precipice, a slim tower of rock. Around her were other peaks, a chessboard of granite kings, many of them grand, cloud-swept mountains climbing into the sky. She stood on the edge and looked down, but there was no bottom to the world, no emerald earth, just mist. She knew she could fly.

  When she glanced behind her, Bobby was there, tears streaming down his face, and she didn’t understand how he could be so sad when there was such joy to be had here.

  Amanda smiled at him and blew him a kiss. Then, with her arms spread wide, she stepped into the air.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Blake ran. The night gave him cover. He sprinted through the empty lot, feeling broken glass crunch and scatter under his feet. When he reached Eighth Street, he headed northeast, toward the downscale neighborhood surrounding the overpass for Highway 95. He slowed to a walk as he crossed Stewart Avenue, then ran again when he was beyond the glare of lights from the street.

  He abandoned his car, which was parked three blocks in the opposite direction, but it was stolen, and he could readily steal another. His apartment was only half a mile away, and it was safer now to get there on foot.

  There were a handful of strangers around him. It was after midnight, and they were mostly ducking the law themselves, selling drugs or using drugs. They glanced in his direction as he ran, to make sure there were no cops in hot pursuit, but otherwise they didn’t care about him. The deeper he penetrated into the neighborhood, the fewer people he saw, until he was alone. He walked again.

  He saw the concrete overpass ahead. The houses around him were sunk into decay, with collapsing fences, cracked pink stucco, and gates hanging open. A few dusty cars were parked haphazardly in the yards. He passed a couple of old shopping carts on the sidewalk, their wheels stripped off.

  Sirens erupted in the surrounding streets. Blake ducked back into the shadows near one of the houses. He eyed the traffic behind him and saw the flashing red lights of a patrol car as it streaked toward the cafe. Word was out It wouldn’t be long now, just a few minutes, before the neighborhood was engulfed by police trying to lay out a net around the area.

  He walked faster. When he passed a house with laundry hung out on a sagging clothesline, he slipped inside the fence and grabbed a jean shirt off the line and shrugged it over his white T-shirt. A baseball cap was lying in the dirt, and he put it on. He began peeling at the false beard on his face. He kept a small bottle of spirit gum remover in his jeans for emergencies, and he tried quickly to get as much of the hair and glue off his face as he could. It wasn’t perfect, but at least at first glance, he was again a man without a beard.

  Blake thought about strategy. He had always expected the police to get close to him eventually, but he had been hoping for a couple more days and a little more breathing room to put his plans in
motion. He didn’t have that now. He had to move immediately. Tonight.

  That was when he realized the crush of police searching for him in the dirty streets could actually work to his advantage.

  He only needed a few hours.

  Blake made his way under the overpass. The freeway traffic roared overhead, creating a thunder in his ears and a constant vibration that rumbled under his feet. His eyes darted around the concrete superstructure, on the hunt for muggers or gangs. It was easy to get trapped here, with no way out to the sides and an easy path to block in front and behind, but he didn’t see anyone except a young hooker, sitting with her back to one of the pillars.

  He didn’t know why she was there. There was no business to be had in this area. Then he saw she was smoking a cigarette and taking an occasional snort of cocaine from a wrinkled piece of tinfoil. Blake stopped and looked at her, his mind grinding and coming up with a plan. She was young, trying to look twenty-one, but he suspected she was no more than fifteen. She wore knee-high boots and a fake leather jacket and had poorly applied lipstick and platinum blond hair that was almost white. She saw him watching her and gave him a drugged smile. When she spread her legs, he saw that she was naked underneath her skirt. She reached down with two fingers and spread her pink lips.

  ’Twenty bucks, baby,” she murmured.

  Blake reached down, grabbed her by her blond hair, and yanked her to her feet. Her cigarette fell smoldering to the pavement.

  “Hey!” she screamed. “Fuckhead, that hurts!”

  He slapped her hard. “Shut up.”

  She took a look in his eyes and tried to run, but he had a lock on her shoulder and spun her back around. Her face filled with fear, and she touched her red cheek tenderly. Her voice became like a kid’s again, weak and scared. “Don’t hurt me.”

  “I’m not going to. Shut up and listen. I’ve got two hundred bucks. It’s yours if you spend the night with me.”

  The expression on her face changed. Greed took over. She smiled a fake seductive smile at him. “Two hundred bucks? Sure, baby, you got it. But look, I don’t do ass, okay? I do everything else, but not that.”

  Blake took her elbow and pushed her to walk beside him. “Fine. Come on, my place is a few blocks away.”

  “Your place?”

  “My apartment.”

  The girl struggled to keep up with him in her highheeled boots. She looked nervous at the idea of going to his apartment.

  “Three hundred bucks,” Blake said, pulling her faster.

  “Three hundred! Yeah, okay, yeah.”

  He led her from the overpass and continued along Eighth Street to where it ended at Ninth Street and turned north. His eyes were constantly moving. He could hear sirens everywhere now. Police cars were beginning to fan out around him.

  “Lot of cops tonight,” the girl said.

  Blake saw a flash of yellow on the street ahead of them. He knew what it was-one of a corps of policemen in neoncolored shirts who patrolled the area on bicycles.

  He turned to the young prostitute. “Kiss me.”

  Before she could react, he leaned down and pressed his lips firmly against hers. She responded hungrily and put her arms around his back. She smelled of litde-girl perfume, and her lips tasted like smoke. Her breathing was rapid, and he could feel her pulse racing in her throat, accelerated by the drugs.

  Behind him, he heard the cop on the bicycle slow, watching them.

  Don’t stop, Blake thought. He didn’t need another dead body and a screaming, hysterical hooker on his hands.

  “Hey, buddy,” the cop called.

  Blake pulled his mouth free from the girl and turned just far enough toward the street that he could see the cop with only a shadow of his profile showing. He hoped the cop couldn’t see the traces of spirit gum clinging to his face. “What’s up?” Blake replied.

  “Look, buddy, we both know what she is. All I can say is, make sure you use a condom, all right?”

  The girl wrenched away from Blake’s arms. “Hey!” she shouted.

  The cop laughed.

  Blake grabbed her waist and picked her up and began carrying her away up Ninth Street. The girl shouted an obscenity and spit in the cop’s direction.

  “A feisty one,” the cop called. “Just remember what I said ”

  “Thanks, officer, I’m very sorry” Blake replied without looking back.

  He exhaled in relief when he heard the bike squeaking as the cop rode away. He put the girl down and locked her jaw in his fist.” You say another word before we get to my place, and the deal’s off. If we see another cop, you act like my girlfriend, and you shut the fuck up. Got it?”

  “Did you hear what he said?” the girl retorted. “Acted like I had some kind of disease.”

  “You probably do.”

  The girl reared her hand back to slap him, but he snatched her wrist and twisted it until she grimaced in pain. “Not a word,” Blake repeated. He tugged her along beside him.

  He was pleased that she stayed quiet now. Her lower lip jutted out as if she were pouting. They crossed Bonanza and passed Metro’s Downtown Command building. It was the middle of die night, but there were cops coming and going past the palm trees that lined the entrance. He felt the girl tense, and he whispered to her, “Don’t worry about it Just keep walking.”

  It was like hiding in plain sight. He wondered what Jonathan Stride would think when he discovered that Blake had been living only blocks from his headquarters. True to form, no one looked at him or the girl as they sauntered past the building and continued to the end of Ninth Street. They reached a narrow alley bordered by a graffiti-strewn stone wall. On their left was a boneyard of abandoned casino signs, the place where the city’s old neon went to rust and die. He pulled her into the alley, which was dark and deserted, and she looked up at him, afraid again. She began twisting to get away, but he held her tight in his grip.

  The area was a honeycomb of dead-end streets. He saw the occasional glow of cigarettes in the black spaces between decrepit houses. There were other signs of life. Coughs. Mutters of conversation. People who didn’t want to be found. He stayed in the middle of the alley, and the girl clung close to him now.

  Four blocks down, he turned onto his street. He stopped, watching it carefully, listening, smelling. There was no stakeout here yet, and he hadn’t expected one, but it paid to be careful. He made his way to the twostory chocolate brown apartment complex, which was halfway to becoming a wreck. He saw clothes hanging over the balconies. A motorcycle was parked near one of the doors. A sorry palm tree drooped near the sidewalk.

  “Come on,” he told her.

  Blake pulled her inside the building, and they went up the stairs to die second floor. His apartment was at the rear. He stopped in the corridor again and listened. A television was on in the first apartment, and he heard the canned laughter of a sitcom. A couple was having sex in another apartment, and he heard exaggerated moaning.

  “Hey, I think I know her,” the girl said brightly.

  “Shut up, let’s go.”

  He took note of the tells he had left on the door of his apartment-a thread on the hinges, a hair stuck near the floor. They were undisturbed. No one had been inside. He opened the door and pushed the girl inside ahead of him. With the door closed, he flipped the light switch.

  “The bedroom’s in there,” he said, pointing to a doorway on the right. “Go in and take your clothes off.”

  “What about my money?” the girl asked. Blake sighed, dug in his wallet, and peeled off eight fifty-dollar bills. The girl’s eyes lit up. “Four hundred bucks? Cool! You’re great! I’ll ride you as long as you can keep it up, you know?”

  “Get inside, strip, and wait for me.”

  “You don’t need to wear a condom, really, I don’t got anything.”

  Blake waved his hand toward the bedroom, and the girl rushed inside, clutching the money in her hand.

  He studied the apartment, assessing what he needed. He alread
y had his gun, which he reloaded quickly, and his knife and a stolen cellular phone. He grabbed a new roll of duct tape to replace the roll he had left behind in the stolen car. He looked around to see if there was evidence he needed to destroy but decided it didn’t matter now.

  He wouldn’t be coming back.

  Blake picked up the plastic case he had taken from a gumball machine. Two human teeth rattled around inside it. He juggled them, looked at their spiked roots, and thought about Amira again. He had come a long way since the day he first saw her in the magazine and finally put a beautiful face to the voice he had heard in his mind his whole life.

  He could see her there, on the roof of the Sheherezade. Her naked body in the cool water of the pool. He imagined her desperate screams for help that went unanswered.

  He was ready to answer them now.

  There was just one last thing to do.

  Blake went into the bedroom. The girl was stretched out on the bed, her nude body squirming on the rumpled sheets. Her breasts barely swelled from her chest, and her nipples looked like mosquito bites. She flapped her spread-open legs.

  “You ready, baby?”

  Blake sat down on the bed beside her. She gave him a big teen grin, and then he clapped his hand over her mouth and stuck the barrel of his gun onto the skin of her forehead between her terrified eyes.

  FORTY

  Stride closed his eyes and wanted to scream.

  The call had come in. Officer down. The store owner who phoned it in had fingered Blake as the shooter, and Stride and a dozen other cars had responded to the scene within minutes. It wasn’t until he arrived at the shop that he learned the identity of the officer who had been shot.

  Amanda.

  He wanted to throw up. The pain made him feel as if someone had taken a serrated knife to his stomach and hacked his way up his rib cage until he found Stride’s heart.

  Stride had lost cops before in the line of duty, sometimes good friends, but never a partner. In the short time they had been together, Amanda had developed a special hold on him, as if she were filling the void that Maggie had left in Minnesota. He didn’t understand her sexuality, but he didn’t care. She was smart. Funny. An underdog. Stride liked underdogs. He felt more for the prostitutes and cocktail waitresses in this city than for the casino bosses in their five-thousand-dollar suits or the drunk tourists and convention rats looking for an easy score.